San Diego FC put MLS on notice: "We're here to win"

CARSON, Calif. – History made.
Six hundred and forty-seven days since their expansion announcement, San Diego FC got off to a perfect start in their MLS debut by defeating defending MLS Cup champions LA Galaxy, 2-0, at Dignity Health Sports Park courtesy of an Anders Dreyer brace.

“We said from the beginning that we’re here to win,” head coach Mikey Varas said after the club's debut on Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire.

“The tone was set from day one. This is just a step in the direction of where we want to go. We want to have a winning mentality in this club. We want to do things at the highest level.”

A dream start

From the opening whistle, San Diego imposed their style of play on the Galaxy, unencumbered by being the new kids on the block.

“The most important thing is that the boys showed conviction for what we’ve been working on all preseason. They showed the quality that they have,” Varas said. “I think they did a fantastic thing today. It’s not easy what they did. They made the football come to life on the field. I’m so proud of the conviction that they showed.”

That conviction led to Dreyer netting a second-half brace on his MLS debut. Fellow DP winger Hirving “Chucky” Lozano helped break the deadlock with his assist in the 52nd minute before substitute Tomás Ángel fed the Danish international to ice the game in the 93rd minute.

“Of course, it’s special to make the first goal for this club,” Dreyer said. “We just want to keep going and enjoy every day we are at the training facilities. It’s so nice to show the people in the US what we’re capable of and the way we want to play.”

That style of play earned an invaluable first victory, taking the ideal first steps as MLS team No. 30 forms an identity.

“It is very important,” Lozano said of winning the first match. “I think it’s a very important step for the club and for the guys. We all trained really hard all month and you can see the result on the field that the guys gave it their all. We showed up today.”

Beating the champs

Winning your first game as an expansion team is one thing, but to do it at the reigning MLS Cup champions? That's a whole different level of impressive.

“They had a little party before the game and we spoke about, ‘Let’s kill that party,’” Dreyer said. “I think we did that quite well.”

The Galaxy didn't lose a single match at DHSP last season en route to winning MLS Cup, but San Diego snapped that streak to begin the 2025 campaign.

“The team performance was special and the kind that we stick to how we wanted to play the whole game. We were brave,” captain Jeppe Tverskov said. “We played against the champions, but still tried to play out the way we want to play and the way we want to impact the games. It’s the perfect situation.”

Home opener on the horizon

Another first awaits SDFC when they host St. Louis CITY SC in their home opener next Saturday night at Snapdragon Stadium (10:30 pm ET | MLS Season Pass, Apple TV+).

“I don’t think it will be difficult for us to be motivated for that,” Tverskov said. “We feel the hype for the city the last couple of weeks. I would imagine after tonight it hasn’t slowed down.”

Against St. Louis, the main focus will be sticking to the principles that fueled success in Los Angeles. Varas wants to ensure San Diego's style does not waver, regardless of the scenario.

“I think we showed that when we’re on point, we’ll be a very dangerous team. It’s a type of football that can make you very competitive, so we have to believe in it,” Varas told reporter Andrew Wiebe post-game on MLS Season Pass.

“In the good and the bad, we have to believe in it because it won’t always go our way. But we’ve got to stick with it, we’ve got to have convictions and we’ve got to keep working.”

As San Diego head home for the first time, the fans will be a crucial piece to the puzzle.

“The support from the fans was fantastic and thankfully we won. Now they get to go home happy and a very special memory for them,” Lozano said. “I think they were all excited getting here and they showed up and really supported us.”

LAFC find their A-game, Houston's depth concern & more from Matchday 1

Welcome to season 30 of MLS, and season 15 of this particular column. I’m finally batting .500.
We had some big debuts, a bit of late space in Fort Lauderdale (and then some post-whistle spice on top of that), the league's newest team making history and some familiar faces in new places. Lots to talk about as usual.

We’ll start in LA, where the Black & Gold opened their season with a win.
I really liked the talent on last year’s LAFC side, so I’m still kind of reeling from how much the roster has changed this offseason. Part of that is obviously cap-inflicted – it’s hard to keep a great team together for three or four straight years in MLS – and part of it is just a fact of participating in the global transfer market. Develop a player like Mateusz Bogusz and he will attract interest from overseas, and eventually that type of interest will lead to the types of offers that no MLS team would turn down. Change becomes part of life. So it goes.

But still, there was a ton of year-over-year change beyond that (Jesús Murillo off to Juárez, Eduard Atuesta off to Orlando, etc), so it was hard to imagine them picking up where they’d left off. As such we’ve already seen some early dislocation; it’s been difficult, through two games, for the Black & Gold to play with rhythm or incisiveness.

On Saturday afternoon, in the first half of the first league game of the year, Minnesota did well to capitalize on that. They dragged the hosts upfield by playing against the ball in a low block, trading possession and field position for space to counter into. They did so by playing a 3-4-1-2 with Joaquín Pereyra underneath a pair of true No. 9s in Kelvin Yeboah and Tani Oluwaseyi.

The purpose of the 3-4-1-2 in the modern game is twofold:

1. Make sure your main guy (in Minnesota’s case that’s Yeboah) is never isolated and always has a partner to play with/off of.
2. Make it so that when your main guy drags center backs with him via his off-ball movement, there’s another attacker perfectly positioned to take advantage of the space that creates. Dare the opposing CBs to win moment after moment in isolation.

Point No. 2… man, this worked almost immediately, as Yeboah’s movement ripped open some space in front of goal for Tani within five minutes. And it felt like there was going to be more to come as LAFC were truly up against it.

But even with all the offseason changes, and even with Minnesota playing a formation that few teams trot out these days, LAFC know how to take a punch. In this case, instead of stumbling, they adjusted on the fly: new d-mid Igor Jesus dropped deeper and deeper, playing almost like an old-fashioned stopper rather than a modern d-mid, resulting in fewer 1v1s for the center backs to win. That allowed them to get to halftime at 0-0, and then to make some more adjustments – attack-minded adjustments – for the second 45.

They worked. Volume up:
Getting Timothy Tillman on the right side of midfield and Mark Delgado over on the left changed – really, it might’ve even fixed, long-term – the midfield balance by allowing LAFC to extend the game vertically. Tillman compresses the game with his ability in tight quarters, then makes it big with his off-ball movement. He effectively tilted the field early in the second half with his direct runs, while Delgado’s ability to win second balls and get attackers into open space has always been underrated, and was pivotal on the game’s only goal in the 1-0 win.

It all led not just to more possession, but pitch control, incisiveness and more dangerous possession, which is not something the Black & Gold had any of in the first half. And frankly, they had precious little of any of the above in their 2-1 midweek Concacaf Champions Cup loss at Colorado.

“I think having more possession this year was something we talked about in the offseason trying to improve, and I think we've done a great job of that,” head coach Steve Cherundolo said in the postgame presser. “Can you turn possession into goals? So, I am not the right coach – I am not the coach who's going to sit here and say all possession is great. If we don't score any goals… the point of possessing the ball is to be dangerous and to create chances and to score.

“So I think if we can create more chances with that amount of possession, I think that's our next step and that's progression with this team.”

It’s going to be a process, but after three halves of struggle, there were finally some hopeful signs. They’ll probably have to do it again – and do it better – in Tuesday’s CCC rematch with the Rapids.

As for the Loons, there was plenty to build on, though I am very interested in how long Robin Lod remains a sub, as Pereyra has yet to look like an effective MLS player.
Another very good team with a whole hell of a lot of offseason turnover are Houston. Again, it was largely understandable, as they got Godfather offers for a couple of their players, and probably had to move on from Héctor Herrera. But there were a few others – particularly the parting of ways with starting goalkeeper Steve Clark – that felt like a little too much.

Anyway, the Dynamo inverted LAFC’s pattern from the above blurb in that they looked good for the first half, then crashed and burned in the second. Both the crash and the burn, and the eventual 2-1 home loss to FC Dallas, were self-inflicted.

First, the good parts. The elephant in the room all offseason was: “Can the Dynamo still be the Dynamo even after the departures of Herrera and Coco Carrasquilla from that great midfield group?” And on their only goal – the game’s opening goal – we got a resounding “yes” for an answer:
That’s pure Jogo Benny-to. And the numbers…

• Passes into final third: 50 - 29
• Passes in final third: 130 - 62
• Passes into opponent’s box: 11 - 6

Those are all typical Dynamo statlines, ones that are key to their success. They also had 56 percent possession and tilted the field with it. They generated a few big chances and were effective at controlling the game with the ball. If Jack McGlynn’s 73rd-minute rocket is two inches to the right, it’s 2-1 Dynamo with 15 minutes left and all the momentum.

But as the tweet says, even if they play the same way as what we’ve seen the past two years, this isn’t really the same Dynamo team. Ethan Bartlow was replacing Micael, who was just sold to Palmeiras for a club-record fee, and it was Bartlow’s catastrophic turnover in the middle of the backline that gifted Petar Musa Dallas’s equalizer. About 20 minutes later it was Clark’s replacement, Andrew Tarbell, who went walkabout on what became Anderson Julio’s game-winner.

Personnel matters. Mistakes – even small ones, but definitely ones the size that Bartlow and Tarbell made – matter a lot. You can’t give gifts in this league, something which will be even more true next week when the Dynamo are hosting Messi & Friends for Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire.

“It's just reps, right? Time with each other and, you know, you have three guys that haven't started with each other,” Dynamo head coach Ben Olsen said in the postgame. “But what happens is, sometimes those moments, you can play a full game of quality and have a moment where you're a little naive. And, in this league, that can cost you.”

That’s almost axiomatic when playing against a team with a No. 9 like Musa, who was excellent even as the team around him mostly struggled. Dallas, of course, are rebuilding even more than Houston, with new coach Eric Quill and new No. 10 Lucho Acosta (mostly anonymous in his debut), and a new d-mid, and a new winger, and a new center back and right back and… it’s a lot. So it’s not surprising they weren’t great.

But nobody in Frisco is going to care too much about that today. They showed the ability to come back from a deficit and showed the ability to protect a late lead. As a result, they got a road win in a derby.

Couldn’t have asked for much more from the season’s first 90 minutes than that.
13. Kévin Denkey got the game’s only goal and looked the part of a reported $16.2 million man in FC Cincinnati’s 1-0 win over the visiting Red Bulls. I was just way, way more impressed with Denkey’s hold-up and combo play than I’d expected to be, and while Evander wasn’t particularly sharp, he did harvest one soul (Daniel Edelman, 59th minute).

The Red Bulls – who surprised me by playing a 3-4-2-1 – weren’t bad by any means. It’s just that Cincy, even missing a couple of key pieces (Matt Miazga’s still not quite back from last year’s injury and Luca Orellano is working towards match fitness after finally coming to terms on a new deal), had more ways to win. Barring a spate of injuries like what they suffered last year, they will be in the Supporters’ Shield race until the very end.

One note on RBNY: I thought Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting was good in his debut, though he, Emil Forsberg and Lewis Morgan seemed to kind of want to occupy the same attacking spots (consequently the team’s best moments going forward tended to involve right wingback Cameron Harper). I wonder how long it’ll take to get that sorted.

12. Denkey was the MLS record signing for a few months, right up until Atlanta inked Emmanuel Latte Lath. Special Armchair Analyst correspondent Calen Carr was on hand for Latte Lath’s debut brace in a more-dramatic-than-it-had-to-be 3-2 home win over CF Montréal. I’m going to give some excerpts from the very long text he sent me:

• Adding Latte Lath was a “hold my beer” moment after Cincy signed Denkey for a league-record fee, especially while multiple Premier League clubs were also in pursuit of him. The fact that he scored his first two MLS goals in “Plan B” ways – header on a set piece and a poacher’s rebound – vs. his more preferred intelligent movement and pace in behind is a good sign that he’s pointed north of 20 goals this season.
• The thing with spending MLS-record transfer fees (around $45 million over two windows spread across Alekey Miranchuk, Miguel Almirón & Latte Lath) is that individual quality in the absence of chemistry and continuity still finds a way to win.
• Atlanta are still short-handed without the width from fullbacks Brooks Lennon (a month or two away) and Pedro Amador (weeks away) to the preferred inverted winger setup.
• Montréal fought back twice and deserved more than what they got. They even hit the crossbar in the dying moments while up a man (Almirón will have to figure out the new 10-second substitution rule that’s been added since he went abroad).
• Nathan Saliba is a top-10 U22 player in MLS who I think is set to take another big step forward this year (scored a great goal), and George Campbell is quietly one of the best versions of modern-day MLS center backs who can defend in space and also bomb forward.

If you’re a sicko, you should move Montréal up your watchability rankings. This team’s probably not headed for 50 points, but they’re going to play a ton of fun games.

11. Our Pass of the Week goes to TFC d-mid Alonso Coello for this very nice through-ball to Henry Wingo on the overlap in what eventually became a 2-2 draw at D.C. United:
It was a good point for the Reds, who twice fought back from a goal down on the road. For D.C… growing pains. If you want to dig in more, I highly recommend Marc Machado’s feed.

10. Austin mostly controlled proceedings, but weren’t especially dangerous for the first hour at home vs. Sporting KC (and were lucky not to go down 1-0 midway through the first half when Willy Agada put Dániel Sallói through – all hail Brad Stuver!).

But they kept the pressure on, turned the screws and eventually got a deserved, late winner when Osman Bukari pushed home Owen Wolff’s corner kick service at the back post.

Sporting have now started their season with a pair of 1-0 losses, one in CCC play and this one to open up their league slate.

“You always have got to limit as many set pieces as you can against you, whether it be corners, wide free kicks, free kicks in and around your box,” manager Peter Vermes said afterward. “You're trying to limit the amount that you give, and unfortunately we did in that situation and we lose the game based on a set piece.

“We have a long way to go.”

9. The best moment of St. Louis’s scoreless draw with visiting Colorado was this bit of, s---housery from Simon Becher:
Sadly for the home fans, Henry Kessler was offside on Eduard Löwen’s original shot, so the goal was flagged off.

Becher, by the way, was everywhere – and while there will be some frustration (both from him and, I’m sure, among a certain subset of fans) that he wasn’t able to put away one of his chances, the fact he found so many is a very, very good thing. Trust strikers who find chances to eventually finish them.

“It's normally a game we win,” new St. Louis boss Olof Mellberg said. “I think we dominated most of the game. We have the stats here, it was 18-2 shots and limited them to, yeah, zero chances, basically. There were a couple of dangerous situations in the box where we defended well, but apart from that, they didn't have any chances, and we created enough to score at least two or three goals.”

Yup. Trust performances like that to eventually turn into three points.

The short-handed Rapids – missing three starters and three other rotation players – did well, on short rest, to cling to that road point. And Zack Steffen (who’s taken a lot of criticism here over the years) put together his second straight quality performance.

8. The Revs also went on the road and held onto a point, registering a scoreless draw at Nashville.

Sam Surridge, Nashville’s DP No. 9, had three very good chances to win this one. If he’s not able to deliver in those moments, it’s going to be a long season for the ‘Yotes.

7. Leo Messi rescued an Inter Miami side that had to play a man down for more than an hour after – stop me if you’ve heard this one before – Toto Avilés got himself sent off in what became a 2-2 draw with New York City FC.

The second Miami goal, a dramatic equalizer nearly 10 minutes into second-half stoppage time, was the kind of play few can make and Messi does better than anybody in the history of the game. The first goal was the kind that anyone can make… and Messi still does better than anybody in the history of the game:
The Herons will be elite as long as they can keep 11 men on the field. Avilés in the lineup makes that exponentially less likely. He’s got to sit.

As for NYCFC, they played with no DPs on the road against the Shield favorites and came away with a point. But man, this one really did feel like two points dropped.

6. We’ll start our “familiar face, new place” rundown (which I guess should’ve included Ronny Deila, Robin Fraser and Nico Estévez as well – sorry boys!) with Bradley Carnell, whose Philly side – playing the classic, Red Bull 4-2-2-2 instead of the typical Union diamond – went to Orlando and thumped the Lions 4-2 behind a pair of goals from Tai Baribo and a wicked high press.

Here’s the network passing graphic, which tells you how tight left midfielder Quinn Sullivan (No. 33) was playing to the forwards:
Orlando eventually got chances – they won the xG battle 3.08 to 1.87 – but the bulk of those came in garbage time, when they were already 4-1 down. Playing without Robin Jansson, they looked like a team that was badly in need of center back reinforcements. And Pedro Gallese, well… the Union had four shots on target, and they had four goals.

5. The Chicago Fire’s first game under Gregg Berhalter was probably the most entertaining one of the entire weekend. Chicago scored two great goals in semi-transition (Jonathan Bamba and Brian Gutiérrez were awesome), conceded two WPIOOTBGW classics, saw Carlos Terán pot the most remarkable own goal in a weekend filled with remarkable own goals, and saw the Crew eventually take control with some excellent adjustments:

• Mo Farsi dropped deeper at about the 25th minute to stop Bamba from getting in behind.
• Sean Zawadzki pressed higher, which caused Chicago all sorts of problems.

Zawadzki was great, by the way, and this performance reminded me of how good he looked before he fractured a rib last September (and, to his credit, played through it down the stretch and into the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs). If he’s full strength, and if the Crew go out and add a high-end DP attacker… man, they might not drop off much, if at all, from last year.

Anyway, back to the Fire: the fans were pretty jazzed about this performance, even with a loss. Berhalter, however, smelled a result and was pissed not to get it.

“I think the goals, basically we gave them three goals, right? That's tough. That's tough,” he said in the presser. “But the positives of it are we created a number of chances. If we limit [the errors], we're right in this game, potentially winning the game.”

I don’t think that’s wrong, but those errors have been in the Fire’s DNA for 15 years across multiple coaches, CSOs and organizational rebuilds. We’ll see if they can make progress in eliminating them by Matchday 2.

4. The final old coach in a new spot is the most familiar of all, as Bruce Arena was on the sidelines for the Quakes for the first time. And he pulled a bit of a switcheroo, trotting his side out in a 3-4-1-2 instead of the typical 4-4-2 (Bruce has used either a flat 4-4-2 or a diamond primarily throughout his career) we’ve come to know over the past 30 years.

It finished 4-0. Daniel was excellent in goal, and Cristian Espinoza was terrifying as a purely attacking right wingback. But also…

“The scoreline wasn’t fair. I don’t think that’s a 4-0 game,” Arena said. “[RSL] had a lot going against them, coming in with their game Wednesday in Costa Rica and those challenges and all of that, so as a starting point, let’s be fair about that. But our team played well. It was a good team effort, and obviously, we’re building a team that hasn’t experienced a whole lot of success, so to kick off the season with a win is great. ... But let’s keep this in perspective.”

I think that’s an entirely correct take, though 1) I really liked the protection the 3-4-1-2 gave to the center forwards, Josef Martínez and Chicho Arango, so I am more bullish on San Jose than I thought I’d be, and 2) while I am mostly giving RSL a mulligan, through two games they do look like a team that’s missing 70% of their goals from last season. And that’s scary.

3. Our Face(s) of the Week goes to Seattle center backs Jackson Ragen and Yeimar Gómez Andrade, who, uh, did this:
This was not a vintage performance from Charlotte, who were on the back foot all game and needed a Goalkeeper of the Year-caliber performance from Kristijan Kahlina to come out of Lumen Field with the 2-2 draw.

But there simply aren’t many MLS teams who could’ve taken this point, whether they played well or not. Charlotte are as good as anyone in the league at suffering against the ball for prolonged stretches and still coming away with a result, and it shows.

For Seattle, I don’t think there’s going to be any worry, just frustration. Oh, and Georgi Minoungou is a PROBLEM!!

2. The competitive portion of Vancouver’s trip to Portland – this time for a road game, not the “home” date they had in the 2024 playoffs – ended with Kamal Miller’s DOGSO red card in the 11th minute.

Ryan Gauld made it 1-0 in the 24th minute, and Pedro Vite doubled the lead eight minutes after that. By the time the final whistle sounded, the ‘Caps had themselves a 4-1 win, led by Jayden Nelson's 1g/3a.

New head coach Jesper Sørensen couldn’t have asked for more; the team’s mentality once they went up a man was ruthless and excellent, and all the more impressive given their CCC-induced travel issues. There was no “let’s wear them out”; it was pure “let’s go for the throat.” About the only issue is, given the 11-v-10 nature of the game, I’m not sure there’s anything they can take away tactically.

You can for Portland, who come out in a 3-5-2. They didn’t play a lot of that last year and it showed, and I thought color commentator Brian Dunseth neatly summed up the issue Vancouver immediately exploited.

“It will be the challenge, especially with this [new] formation that we didn't get to see enough of, with this three-in-the-back system… of tactically, how do they deal with moments that actually led to that red card?” Dunseth asked. “When a center back gets sucked up[field], how do the two outside center backs deal with recovery, recognition and moments of danger?

“It failed them in the first 15 minutes. How does that experience help them going forward as they kind of dig into the details of what they need to do better without the ball?”

We should start finding out for real next week.

1. The Galaxy were very generous hosts for the inaugural Sunday Night Soccer, as they gifted San Diego FC the first goal in club history:
That stood up into stoppage time before Anders Dreyer got another on the break for the 2-0 final. For the most part, these two teams had serious trouble converting any of their midfield possession into penetration and chances. But when they had chances to be opportunistic, SDFC – Dreyer! – were ruthless.

• For San Diego, their sterility in possession was at least partially a tactical choice as they kept their fullbacks deep – couldn’t dare let Gabriel Pec get in behind – and played two 8s instead of an 8 and a 10. All of it was very risk-averse, but I can’t blame them at all for that given the circumstances (and, obviously, the result). I expect they will become more adventurous as the weeks roll on.
• For the Galaxy, they struggled to find their midfield balance (head coach Greg Vanney was yelling at newcomer Lucas Sanabria about his positioning the entire first half), which meant they almost never got playmaker Marco Reus between the lines.

LA, to their credit, seemed to figure out how to crack the visitors apart once they hit the Tactics Free Zone™ in the final 15 minutes. Elijah Wynder, who came on for Sanabria, was a big part of that, adding both combo play and direct, off-ball running out of central midfield. Again, it was the Tactics Free Zone™ so take it with a grain of salt, but the difference was so stark I kind of wonder if a personnel change might already be in order.

Either way, the Galaxy very clearly have a problem to solve without Riqui Puig for next week, and probably the subsequent 30 weeks as well.

As for San Diego… that mid-block 4-3-3 of theirs played about as tight (complimentary) as possible, and then their DPs won the game. I honestly think that’s exactly how they drew it up. Job extraordinarily well done.

Jayden Nelson steals the show for Vancouver Whitecaps: "I'm not satisfied"

"I'm here."
Jayden Nelson mouthed those very words after scoring for Vancouver Whitecaps FC to cap a 4-1 season-opening win Sunday at Cascadia rivals Portland Timbers – and cement a fantastic debut performance.

Nelson left his 62-minute shift with one goal and three assists. And while it helped that Timbers' center back Kamal Miller was issued an 11th-minute red card, the Canadian international winger was still brilliant at Providence Park.

"The first day I came here, I said that I really want the football to do the talking," Nelson said post-game on MLS Season Pass on Apple TV.

"That's what I want to do. I'm not satisfied, I want to keep going and I want to prove to everyone that I'm here to prove my potential."

Huge potential

Vancouver acquired the 22-year-old a month ago, completing a transfer from Norwegian top-flight side Rosenborg BK. The move prompts an MLS reunion after Nelson's two-year swing in Europe; he previously spent 2020-22 as a Toronto FC homegrown player.

Though it's just one game, new Whitecaps head coach Jesper Sørensen saw flashes of the youngster's sky-bright potential.

"When you're a young player and you break through in the way Jayden did at the beginning of his career, then everybody starts to build up a hype about players and all of a sudden it's difficult to live up to that," Sørensen said. "It's normal and it's usual to have difficulties in a football career. It's more normal that there are difficulties than not.

"But the good thing about Jayden is that he has some potential; he has a good skill set with some things he does really well. Then he has to have the work ethic to keep working to round off his play even more. He's a young man who already now, early on in his career, has experienced a lot and done a lot. But I hope that we can help him grow into a player who can produce at a constant high level."

More to come?

Nelson isn't getting too carried away, despite becoming just the second player in Whitecaps history to record at least three assists and a goal in a match, joining now-Bayern Munich star Alphonso Davies (June 9, 2018). He is also their fourth-ever player with at least four goal contributions in a match.

But there's little doubt about who Vancouver's star was on MLS is Back weekend. And there's a quiet confidence brewing in the Brampton, Ontario native.

"I played in this league, I know this league," Nelson said. "I played in Europe, I'm coming back. There's a lot of expectations on me. I have that on my shoulders and am coming here to prove that I can do it."

Atlanta United pull out the stops in sensational debut victory

"I felt like I was at a rock concert!"
Atlanta United head coach Ronny Deila summed up the experience of his first match in charge of the Five Stripes – a dramatic 3-2 win over CF Montréal in front of 65,520 raucous fans at Mercedes Benz Stadium.

The near-capacity crowd was treated to a debut brace from MLS-record signing Emmanuel Latte Lath, and a late, game-winning golazo from Edwin Mosquera.

"It was crazy good. It was unbelievable," gushed Deila. "This is an unbelievable stadium, and we have unbelievable fans... We have more to go though, this is just the start.”

$22 million debut

Fresh off his record transfer from EFL Championship outfit Middlesbrough, Latte Lath made his presence known with an emphatic brace. The Ivory Coast international headed home a corner kick in the first half and later pounced on a loose ball in the box, showing a striker's instinct to find the back of the net, becoming the first player in club history to score multiple goals in his regular-season debut.

"It was my first time in my career to score in my first game with my new team, so I’m really, really happy," the 26-year-old said. "It means a lot because I came here with ambition so I'm really happy for the team. They helped me when I came here, and we finished with the three points."

Latte Lath drew praise from his new teammates, including Mateusz Klich, who made his Atlanta debut after his winter trade from D.C. United.

"He’s quick, he’s dangerous and he scores goals," Klich said. "That’s exactly what the team needs in a striker, and he could have scored three goals or more. Maybe four today. So, it’s good to have him there. He’s hungry. He’s electric."

Hero's return

While Latte Lath's grabbed the headlines, club legend Miguel Almirón had an emphatic return to Atlanta. In his first match back with the Five Stripes since re-joining from Premier League side Newcastle United, the 2018 MLS Cup winner grabbed the match-winning assist, setting up Mosquera for a top-quality strike to seal the three points.

"I felt very good on the field," the Paraguayan international said. "It’s always great to come back and next to my teammates. I felt their support, the support of the fans, and that makes me feel good on the field."

No stranger to the atmosphere at the Benz, the support from the Atlanta faithful still isn't lost on Almirón. A fan favorite since the club's 2017 expansion season, the veteran midfielder felt right at home in his first game with the club in nearly seven years.

"I felt it since I arrived in Atlanta," he said of Saturday's reception. "I’m always going to be grateful for the fans and that’s always why I try to repay that affection that they give me on the field. I try to work twice as hard, and not just me but the effort from all my teammates.”

Room to improve

Despite the three points, Atlanta know they have work to do. Deila wasn't particularly pleased with how his team defended, and his sentiments were echoed by the players.

"It wasn’t great," admitted Klich. "Plan to improve. But it was the first game of the season, we got three points and scored three goals. So I will take it. Whenever you play a bad game, if you win the game, it’s very good.”

"If you give the opposition time and space to deliver crosses and pick passes, there’s good enough players on every team to be able to do that," agreed goalkeeper Brad Guzan.

"We’ll go back and look at it. The most important part is the three points and being able to look back on this and we can build and learn and grow and so that part’s good.”

While the performance may not have been perfect, the Five Stripes will work on improvements with three points under their belts, a positive start to a season filled with high expectations.

"It's a massive three points in that atmosphere,” Deila said. "We learn from experience, and we learned with winning and I think that’s more fun."

Columbus Crew show there's life after Cucho with statement win

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Columbus Crew knew things would be different this season following the stunning departure of club talisman Cucho Hernández to LaLiga's Real Betis earlier this month.
And while questions were floating around before Saturday's season opener against Chicago Fire FC, they were swiftly answered in a thrilling 4-2 win in front of a sold-out Lower.com Field.

Forwards Jacen Russell-Rowe and Diego Rossi both got on the scoresheet, the latter netting a brace to help fill the Colombian superstar's void, as well as outgoing striker Christian Ramírez, now with defending MLS Cup presented by Audi champions LA Galaxy.

Convincing performance

“It doesn’t matter who is on the team,” Rossi said postgame. “I’m going to work for the team and for myself. I always work like that, no matter which team or which players are around me. We’re always trying to be better.”

Rossi scored the decisive third and fourth goals for Columbus, spearheading the offense off the right side and combining well with Russell-Rowe, who started up front.

Goalkeeper Patrick Schulte, who responded well from two first-half blunders with key second-half saves to close out the win, felt Columbus looked cohesive and confident even with the big changes they’ve undergone in the transfer market.

“I’m proud of the team, but it's no surprise to us in the locker room,” Schulte said. “We know the quality we have in the team, and we know that we're gonna have to score by committee and have performances like this where it's a collective effort. We can't just rely on one person.”

Still a force

While the attacking outburst from Rossi, Russell-Rowe and Co. fueled the hosts to victory after falling behind twice to a pair of first-half Brian Gutiérrez goals, Wilfried Nancy’s side still looked like the elite side they've been over the past two seasons, the one led by the 2023 MLS Cup and Leagues Cup 2024 MVP.

“We found a lot of opportunities with the press and we could've scored seven or eight goals today,” Russell-Rowe said. “We were just happy to come back from a losing position to carry on the momentum and find a way to control the game.

“We're a different team, but we're the same team at the same time," he said. "We're always gonna play our style and be very competitive.”

“Magnificent” Lionel Messi bails out Inter Miami in season opener

Inter Miami CF changed their head coach, chief soccer officer, a good chunk of their squad and even their kits this winter, with six players departing from last year’s Supporters’ Shield-winning side and 12 new faces arriving.
Old habits die hard for Lionel Messi & Co., however, based on their 2025 MLS season opener vs. New York City FC at Chase Stadium Saturday night, a wild affair that extended the Herons’ tendencies towards chaotic drama.

“The reality is that with all the difficulties that we had during this game, there was more than one game within one match: everything favorable to us 15, 20 minutes in, and then everything was against us afterward,” a philosophical Javier Mascherano told reporters in Spanish during his postgame press conference.

“We have to live with that.”

"The soul of this team"

Miami dominated their guests in the opening phases, a trademark, raking one-two combination between Jordi Alba and Messi leading to a close-range tap-in for center back Tomás Avilés just five minutes in.

Yet they suddenly found themselves under the gun when Avilés – IMCF’s runaway leader in both cautions (13) and ejections (2) last season – received a straight red card for denial of a goal-scoring opportunity, when he yanked down Alonso Martínez just after 23 minutes. NYCFC scored on the ensuing set piece, then surged ahead when Alba’s astonishing backpass 10 minutes after halftime handed Martínez a glorious one-on-one with goalkeeper Oscar Ustari, which he converted clinically.

A 2-1 lead and a man advantage is nowhere near enough of a cushion when facing the GOAT, though. The Pigeons became the latest MLS opponents to learn this when Messi sliced through their lines, deep into the extensive second-half injury time, then slipped a subtle, devastating through ball into the path of debutant Telasco Segovia, the young Venezuelan coolly lifting his finish over the advancing Matt Freese and into the net to snatch a spectacular point for the hosts.
A wide-open 2-2 draw with two galling breakdowns and recurring defensive jitters redeemed by two gorgeous Messi assists? Not a bad encapsulation of the IMCF experience.

“He's the soul of this team,” said Mascherano of Messi, his friend and former teammate with Argentina and FC Barcelona. “You saw this in the pitch. He is as a kid playing, and he doesn't want to lose. So for us, he’s a big, big advantage. So, we need to keep him with this spirit, you know, because it's not just what he does on the pitch, it's what he translates to his teammates, and all that he does.

“With his 37 years, he's not just playing in attack, he helped us in defense, running the center back, running the holding midfielder. So it's magnificent.”

Hard-earned point

Mascherano elected to celebrate the team’s fighting spirit rather than bemoan their self-inflicted wounds, nodding to the influence of the Herons’ Concacaf Champions Cup series vs. Sporting KC, which opened with a 1-0 Messi-inspired win in subzero temperatures in Kansas City on Wednesday and will conclude with Tuesday’s second leg in South Florida.

If that equalizer had arrived just a bit sooner, he mused, they might have even pulled out a win.

“I want to emphasize this, because I gave it a lot of value,” said the Argentine manager. “At the end, we had two options: to not struggle, and think about Tuesday, or play ‘til the end. And they decided to struggle to the end, and they had their recompense.

“What do we have to improve? Well, there's always a lot of things to improve, but we'll do it behind closed doors. And I'll repeat – more than that we're screwed because we wanted to win the game at home, this is going to strengthen us.”

Segovia saves the day

The enduring excellence of Miami’s ‘Fab Four’ of Messi, Alba, Luis Suárez and Sergio Busquets is well known; what made last season particularly remarkable was the surprising extent of the contributions from youngsters and role players. Segovia’s instant impact offers the Rosanegra hope of pulling off a similar balancing act again.

“A very high-quality player, and we know what he can contribute, and that is why we decided to get him,” Mascherano said of the 21-year-old attacker, signed from Portuguese club Casa Pia. “He's very young. He has enormous potential, and I believe that when he came in, he did a very good game, he played very well.”

The whole spectacle gave NYCFC’s new coach Pascal Jansen a decent enough introduction to MLS life, even if he and his players had ample reason to rue letting victory slip through their fingers in the dying moments.

“Just a little too short. I think my boys took on the challenge with a brave heart, and they were very courageous,” Jansen said postgame. “I think we controlled some parts of the game the way we wanted to, especially out of possession, even though they went down with one man.”

Suárez & Segovia carry Inter Miami in Lionel Messi's absence

No Lionel Messi, no problem.
Inter Miami CF rolled past Houston Dynamo FC in Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire, earning a 4-1 road victory at Shell Energy Stadium without the 2024 Landon Donovan MLS MVP.

Sans Messi, Luis Suárez put in a stunning individual performance. The iconic Uruguayan striker assisted on two first-half goals before scoring himself to seal the win.

"We are possibly talking about one of the best five center forwards in the world in the last 10 years," Miami head coach Javier Mascherano said post-match via a translator.

"He has played with great teams and everywhere he has had a great deal of influence, not just in Barcelona and Liverpool. Obviously for me, it's a privilege as a coach to train this kind of players."

Segovia & Tallende step up

Suárez wasn't the only standout for Miami, of course. Venezuela international Telasco Segovia bagged a first-half brace, putting him at three goals in his first two MLS matches. But for Mascherano, the 21-year-old's performance was no surprise.

"The decision to go get a player like Telasco is because we saw quality, he can play in our team, he contributes a lot of things," Mascherano said of the offseason signing, who's helped replace Diego Gómez moving to Premier League side Brighton & Hove Albion.

"... He has the last pass, he also has a goal, but also in the defensive stance. We know that we can also count on him in different positions and gives us diversity that allows him to be a very important player. We're very happy with him."

Along with Segovia, on-loan forward Tadeo Allende continued his excellent form, smashing into the top corner for his second goal across all competitions. While there's no direct replacement for Messi in MLS – or on the planet – Miami continue to find contributions by committee.

"I am so happy for them because they come here to impact the team," Suárez told MLS Season Pass sideline reporter Andrew Wiebe after the match. "They work very hard to help the team with running and pressure. When we have the ball, they run a lot to create the chances."

Messi's absence

After training on Friday, Messi was a surprise late scratch for the trip to Houston.

Miami's captain stayed home in South Florida amid a congested early-season schedule, a decision Mascherano said was not taken lightly. Miami are balancing MLS play with a Concacaf Champions Cup run, which continues Thursday in the Round of 16 by hosting Jamaican side Cavalier FC.

Amid great expectations, the record-setting 2024 Supporters' Shield winners are taking no chances with the Argentine No. 10's health.

"I don't know a single player that knows their body as Leo knows his," Mascherano said. "The three games in six days and the work that he had done, it was better for him to rest, especially on a trip that's two and a half or three hours. We're thinking about a little bit in his physical well-being."